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Authenticity: 10 Favorite Quotes

“When we
are authentic, we set in motion events that compound themselves and lead to
discovery and growth. In contrast, when we choose to lead a life characterized
by prevent defenses, the choice we faced at 20 is there again at 30 and again
at 40 and again at 50 and again at 60.“—Barry Brownstein, "The Downside of the ‘Prevent
Defense',"

The Systems Thinker, September 2003

“ ... authenticity can’t be cloned without turning it
into ‘authenticity,’ and smart listeners can hear quotation marks a mile away.”

—Lorraine Ali and David Gates

Newsweek, March 11,
2002, p. 61.

“Remember the Kouzes-Posner First Law of Leadership?
If you don’t believe in the messenger, you won’t believe the message. The
observation that people most admire those leaders with clear and strong beliefs
leads to the following corollary to our First Law: You can’t believe in the
messenger if you don’t know what the messenger believes.”

—James Kouzes and Barry Posner

The Leadership
Challenge, Third Edition

“This, I believe, is the great Western truth: that
each of us is a completely unique creature and that, if we are ever to give any
gift to the world, it will have to come out of our own experience and
fulfillment of our own potentialities, not someone else’s.”

—Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

“To live with courage in any work or in any
organization, we must know intimately the part of us that does not give a damn
about the organization or the work. That knows how to live outside the law as
well as within it.”

—David Whyte, Crossing the Unknown Sea

“Every person must follow his or her own process. No
one else can know what is right for another. There is no goal in living our
process, except to live it. Our processes can change. Our lives can change as
we participate in the process. Our only requirement is to trust the process and
live in faith.”

—Anne Wilson Schaef, Living in Process

“The punishment imposed on us for claiming our true
self can never be worse than the punishment we impose on ourselves for failing
to make that claim. And the converse is true as well: no reward anyone might
give us could possibly be greater than the reward that comes from living by our
own best lights.”

—Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak

“You might not have recognized the power of
authenticity, even if you have glimpsed it, because it tends not to draw
attention to itself and it is not necessarily associated with high profile
positions or titles. Authenticity doesn’t need that. Instead, the power of
authenticity is quietly efficient and confidently effective.”

—G. Ross Lawford, The Quest for Authentic Power

“Authenticity means that managers mean what they say.
Integrity means that they do what they say they will do, and for the reasons
they originally stated. By linking intentions, words, and actions, authenticity
and integrity connect the head and the heart.”

—Randall L. Englund, “Authentic Leadership,” LEVERAGE,
No. 41

“Becoming a leader is synonymous with becoming yourself. That simple, that difficult.”—Warren Bennis

I once did many things for many people: strategy, speaking, program development, workshop design and more. While on extended sabbatical writing "Say Yes Less" and "A Manifesto for Macro-Management" I still do a limited number of keynotes and extended length workshops on facilitation and other core leadership topics.